• Aboriginals in North America
  • Beast Literature
  • Canadiana.1
  • Dances & Music
  • Europe
  • Fables and Fairy Tales
  • Fables by Jean de La Fontaine
  • Feasts & Liturgy
  • Great Books Online
  • La Princesse de Clèves
  • Middle East
  • Molière
  • Nominations
  • Posts on Love Celebrated
  • Posts on the United States
  • The Art and Music of Russia
  • The French Revolution & Napoleon Bonaparte
  • Voyageurs Posts
  • Canadiana.2

Micheline's Blog

~ Art, music, books, history & current events

Micheline's Blog

Tag Archives: Les Chouans

Ninth Thermidor: the End of the “Terror”

02 Sunday Feb 2014

Posted by michelinewalker in Literature, The French Revolution

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

Chouannerie, Honoré de Balzac, Les Chouans, Maximilien de Robespierre, Ninety-Three, Ninth Thermidor, The Reign of Terror, Thomas-Alexandre Dumas, Victor Hugo, War in the Vendée

Thermidor
 
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)
 

The Reign of Terror

The French Revolution is an event one can understand. Its aims were noble: liberté, égalité, fraternité. But the Reign of Terror (5 September 1793 – 28 July 1794) seems incomprehensible. It was a period of unparalleled savagery that ended on 27 July 1794. The following day, 28 July 1794, Maximilien Robespierre and Louis Antoine Léon de Saint-Just (25 August 1767 – 28 July 1794) were guillotined. Saint-Just was the main instigator in the excesses of the Terror, or its “Angel of Death.” 

Contradictions

Yet, it is during this horrible period of the French Revolution that slavery was abolished. (See Maximilien de Robespierre, Wikipedia)

On the 4th of February 1794 under the leadership of Maximilien Robespierre, the French Convention voted for the abolition of slavery.

In his Black Count, Tom Reiss[i] writes that

“[t]he story of General Dumas brilliantly illuminates the first true age of emancipation: a single decade during which the French Revolution not only sought to end slavery and discrimination based on skin color but also broke down the ghetto walls and offered Jews full civil and political rights, ending a near-universal discrimination that had persisted since ancient times. (Reiss, p. 11)” 

But, in chapter 13 of The Black Count, entitled “The Bottom of the Revolution” (pp. 175-187), Reiss also tells about the “Terror.” 

The Death of Henri de La Jacquelein, by Alexandre Bloch (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Death of Henri de La Rochejacquelein (aged 26), by Alexandre Bloch (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The War in the Vendée: la Chouannerie

General Dumas was called upon to suppress the royalist uprisings in the west of France: the Vendée. (See War in the Vendée, Wikipedia). According to Tom Reiss, Thomas-Alexandre Dumas, now called Alex Dumas, “risked his career to oppose the bloodshed he saw all around him.” Later, a pro-royalist wrote that Dumas was one of those rare generals who were “always ready bravely to sell their lives on the battleground, but resolved to break their swords than consent to the role of executioners” (Reiss, pp. 11-12).

These royalist uprisings are called “chouanneries,” after Jean Chouan (Jean Cottereau’s nom de guerre). They started during the Revolution, but continued beyond 1799. Thomas-Alexandre Dumas was sent to the Vendée in 1794 but he proved a “generous republican.” (Reiss, p. 12) and was called “Mr Humanity” (Reiss, pp. 146-159).

The chouanneries killed nearly 600,000 Royalists.

Honoré de Balzac & Victor Hugo

French novelist Honoré de Balzac (20 May 1799 – 18 August 1850) wrote Les Chouans, in 1829, one of two novels that brought him “to the brink of success,”[ii] and Victor Hugo (26 February 1802 – 22 May 1885) wrote Ninety-Three  (Quatrevingt-treize) in 1874.[iii] These are extraordinary books.

Henri de La Rochejacquelein at the Battle of Cholet in 1793 by Paul-Emile Boutigny, (19th century), Musée d'art et d'histoire de Cholet, Cholet, France.

Henri de La Rochejacquelein at the Battle of Cholet in 1793, by Paul-Émile Boutigny, (19th century), Musée d’art et d’histoire de Cholet, Cholet, France. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

“The Bottom of the Revolution”

Robespierre abolished slavery, but, ironically, once he stood on the top rung of the ladder, he gave himself permission to kill those he had the power to kill. He in fact acted like a slave owner. However, when it hit bottom, the Revolution also ended. It hit bottom on 9 Thermidor Year II (27 July 1794). It had exhausted itself and there was no one left to kill. During the “Reign of Terror,” 16,594 were executed by guillotine, and 25,000, in summary executions all over France. 

—ooo—

In closing, I should tell you that the 1833 translation of The Slave-King (simply click on the title), from Victor Hugo’s Bug-Jargal, is online. A more recent translation is available, but it is not online.  

“The novel follows a friendship between the enslaved African prince of the title and a French military officer named Leopold d’Auverney during the tumultuous early years of the Haitian Revolution.” (See Bug-Jargal, Wikipedia.)

Moreover, Toussaint Louverture’s story was told by C. L. R. James in his 1989 The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution. 

Sources:

  • Balzac: Les Chouans is a Project Gutenberg publication [EBook #1921] EN
  • Hugo: Quatre-vingt-treize is a pdf publication FR (on the French Revolution, the Terror)
  • Hugo: Ninety-three is an online publication EN
  • Hugo: Quatrevingt-treize is an audio publication FR
  • Hugo: The Slave-King is an online publication EN

_________________________

[i] Tom Reiss, The Black Count: glory, revolution, betrayal, and the real Count of Monte Cristo (New York: Crown Publishers, 2012).

[ii] “Honoré de Balzac.” Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2014. Web. 01 Feb. 2014. <http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/51100/Honore-de-Balzac>.

[iii] “Victor Hugo.” Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2014. Web. 01 Feb. 2014. <http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/274974/Victor-Hugo>.

La Marseillaise (The National Anthem of France)
Plácido Domingo
Daniel Barenboim (conductor)
The Chicago Symphony Orchestra
(Rouget de l’Isle, Pleyel, Hector Berlioz)
The Defence of Rochefort-en-Terre, painting by Alexandre Bloch, 1885

The Defence of Rochefort-en-Terre, by Alexandre Bloch, 1885 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

© Micheline Walker
1st February 2014
WordPress

Micheline's Blog

  • Print
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Pinterest

Like this:

Like Loading...

The Duc d’Enghien: a Murdered Duke

20 Monday May 2013

Posted by michelinewalker in 19th-Century France, History, Literature

≈ 28 Comments

Tags

Alexandre Dumas, Émigrés, Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, Duc d'Enghien, French Revolution, Honoré de Balzac, Leo Tolstoy, Les Chouans, Napoleon, Quibéron

Un Épisode de l'affaire de Quibéron, 1795, by Paul-Émile Boutigny

Un Épisode de l’affaire de Quibéron, 1795 by Paul-Émile Boutigny (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

On 21 March 1804, aged 31, His Serene Highness, the Duke of Enghien, born on 2 August 1772, was executed by single firearm. He was an émigré, but dragoons captured him and brought him to Strasbourg on 15 March 1804. He was the grand-son of Louis XIV, by Madame de Montespan, and the son of Louise Marie Thérèse Bathilde d’Orléans, the Duke of Orléans’ sister. Philippe duc d’Orléans, or Philippe Égalité, the duc d’Enghien’s uncle, voted in favour of his brother’s, Louis XVI, execution, by guillotine.

3consuls

A Portrait of the Three Consuls, from left to right, Jean Jacques Régis de Cambacérès, Napoleon Bonaparte and Charles-François Lebrun, duc de Plaisance (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Duc d’Enghien was a prince of the blood (Prince du Sang) and, therefore, a possible heir to the throne of France. He was accused of participating in a Royalist plot (Cadoudal-Pichegru) to defeat the Consulate (18 Brumaire [9 November] 1799 –1804), part of the Napoleonic era (c. 1795 – 1815 [Congress of Vienna]). He was tried for the sake of appearances, Napoleon having decided he had to be eliminated. D’Enghien had been the commander of a corps of émigrés during the French Revolutionary Wars (1792–1802), but he had not played a role in the above-mentioned 1804 conspiracy. By the time the duke was captured, he had married Charlotte de Rohan (25 October 1767 – 1 May 1841), privately and in near secrecy, and the couple lived in Ettenheim, in Baden, on the Rhine. (See Duc d’Enghien, Wikipedia.)

Louis-Antoine-Henri de Bourbon-Condé, duc d'Enghien

Louis-Antoine-Henri de Bourbon-Condé, duc d’Enghien (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

There were of course many Royalists among the French during the French Revolution (1789-1794). Particularly noteworthy is a failed invasion of France called l’affaire  Quibéron portrayed above by artist Paul-Émile Boutigny (1853 -1929). On 23 June 1795, émigrés landed at Quibéron to lend support to the Vendéens, who had long fought Revolutionary forces, and the chouannerie, royalist uprisings. The émigrés hoped they could raise support in western France, end the French Revolution and re-establish the monarchy.  By 21 July 1795, they had been routed.

As for the duke, nothing could be done to save him. If Joséphine de Beauharnais,[i] Napoléon I‘s first wife, could not dissuade her husband, born Napoleone Buonaparte, no one could.  Joseph Fouché, 1st Duc d’Otrante (known as the Duke of Otranto), Napoleon’s chief of police, said of the execution that “it was worse than a crime, it was a mistake:”  “C’est pire qu’un crime, c’est une faute.“ The crime, for it was a crime, was imputed, probably wrongly, to Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, one of history’s foremost survivors. However, if the murder of the young duc d’Enghien is remembered to this day, it is as an obvious injustice, one that lingered in the mind of great writers.

The “Chouans” and the Duke in literature: Balzac, Dumas and Leo Tolstoy

In Les Chouans, a 1829 novel, French writer Honoré de Balzac (20 May 1799 – 18 August 1850) immortalized the royalist chouannerie, uprisings in western France and, by the same token, the royalist Vendéan insurrection.  For his part, the duc d’Enghien was bestowed life eternal by Leo Tolstoy (9 September 1828 – 20 November 1910), Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy.  In the first book of War and Peace, Tolstoy has the vicomte de Mortemart, a French émigré, say that:

“‘[a]fter the murder of the duc, even the most partial ceased to regard [Buonaparte] as a hero. If to some people he ever was a hero, after the murder of the duc there was one martyr more in heaven and one hero less on earth.’ The vicomte said that the duc d’Enghien had perished by his own magnanimity, and that there were particular reasons for Buonaparte’s hatred of him.”

There is an anecdote according to which, during one of his fainting spells,[ii] Napoléon was at the mercy of the duke of Enghien who spared him. The execusion of the duc d’Enghien who spared him. The execusion of the duc d’Enghien might well have been Napolèons’ brief put personal French Revolution. He needed to kill an aristocrat. Alexandre Dumas, père (24 July 1802 – 5 December 1870) featured the duc d’Enghien in his The Last Cavalier (Le Chevalier de Sainte-Hermine), unfinished at the time of Dumas’ death, but now published and translated into English:

“[T]he dominant sentiment in Bonaparte’s mind at that moment was neither fear nor vengeance, but rather the desire for all of France to realise that Bourbon blood, so sacred to Royalist partisans, was no more sacred to him than the blood of any other citizen in the Republic.

‘Well, then’, asked Cambacérès,[iii] ‘what have you decided?’

‘It’s simple’, said Napoleon, ‘We shall kidnap the Duc d’Enghien and be done with it.'”[iv]

Let these words be the conclusion of this post.  The duc d’Enghien was a scapegoat.

Henri de La Rochejacquelein at the Battle of Cholet in 1793 by Paul-Émile Boutigny (10 March 1853  - 27 June 1929), Musée d'art et d'histoire de Cholet.

Henri de La Rochejacquelein at the Battle of Cholet in 1793 by Paul-Émile Boutigny (10 March 1853 – 27 June 1929), Musée d’art et d’histoire de Cholet.

 _________________________

[i] Napoleon divorced Joséphine in 1810 so he could marry Marie Louise d’Autriche, the future Duchess of Parma, who gave him a son. Napoléon wanted un ventre, a fertile woman.

[ii] Napoleon had epileptic seizures. One of Talleyrand’s duties was to remove Napoléon from public sight when seizures occurred.

[iii] Jean-Jacques Régis de Cambacérès, 1st Duke of Parma, is the author of the Napoleonic Code, a fine document still in use in Quebec.

[iv] See Duc d’Enghien, Wikipedia.

Hector Berlioz (11 December 1803 – 8 March 1869)
Grande Messe des Morts
 
 
Crop of a carte de visite photo of Hector Berlioz by Franck, Paris, c. 1855
Crop of a carte de visite photo of Hector Berlioz by Franck, Paris, c. 1855 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
© Micheline Walker
20 May 2013 
WordPress
 
 
 
 

Micheline's Blog

  • Print
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Pinterest

Like this:

Like Loading...

Europa

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 2,470 other followers

Meta

  • Register
  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.com

Categories

Recent Posts

  • The Rurikid Princes & the Tsardom of Russia
  • The Decline of Kievan Rus’
  • Ilya Repin, Ivan IV and his son Ivan on 16 November 1581, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow
  • Ukraine’s Varangian Princes, its Primary Chronicle, the Russkaya Pravda …
  • Bohdan Khmelnytsky, a Cossack Hetman
  • Ruthenia vs Ukraine
  • Ukraine: … a Genocide?
  • A Brief Disappearance
  • Ukraine: the Battle of Poltava
  • The War in Ukraine: la petite Russie

Archives

Calendar

May 2022
M T W T F S S
 1
2345678
9101112131415
16171819202122
23242526272829
3031  
« Apr    

Social

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • YouTube
  • WordPress.org

micheline.walker@videotron.ca

Micheline Walker

Micheline Walker

Social

Social

  • View belaud44’s profile on Facebook
  • View Follow @mouchette_02’s profile on Twitter
  • View Micheline Walker’s profile on LinkedIn
  • View belaud44’s profile on YouTube
  • View Miicheline Walker’s profile on Google+
  • View michelinewalker’s profile on WordPress.org

Micheline Walker

Micheline Walker
Follow Micheline's Blog on WordPress.com

A WordPress.com Website.

  • Follow Following
    • Micheline's Blog
    • Join 2,470 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • Micheline's Blog
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...
 

    %d bloggers like this: